The Murderous Invisible Line

April 07, 1993|By Bob Greene.

Consider this to be a creepy riddle, or a spooky fairy tale:

There's this huge mass of land. Someone draws an invisible line across the land. Below the invisible line, people are killing each other at a terrifying rate, blasting each other with guns, snuffing out lives and devastating families and entire neighborhoods. Above the invisible line, this isn't happening nearly as much. Things are relatively safe. Far fewer people are getting shot to death.

It isn't a riddle, and it isn't a fairy tale. The huge mass of land is the North American continent. The invisible line is the border separating the United States from Canada.

Here are some figures:

In 1991, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, there were 24,700 homicides in the United States. In Canada, there were 753 homicides.

Canada's population is considerably lower than the population of the United States. The estimated number of people in Canada is 27,296,859; the estimated number of people in the United States is 257,209,566.

Still, the homicide numbers work out to 9.8 murders per 100,000 people in the U.S.; 2.8 murders per 100,000 people in Canada.

More people were murdered in Chicago in 1991 than were murdered in all of Canada. More people were murdered in Los Angeles in 1991 than were murdered in all of Canada. More people were murdered in New York City in 1991 than were murdered in all of Canada.

In the United States, approximately 48.9 percent of the 24,700 homicides-12,090 killings-were reportedly committed via the use of handguns. In Canada, approximately 18 percent of the 753 homicides-136 killings-were reportedly committed via the use of handguns.

Now, there are a variety of conclusions you can draw here.

You can conclude there is something in the Canadian air that makes Canadians much less likely to kill one another with handguns.

Or you can conclude there is something in the Canadian drinking water that makes them peaceful and friendly toward one another.

Conversely, you can conclude that some invisible force present in the atmosphere south of the U.S.-Canada border makes Americans far more disposed to shooting each other with guns-something nefarious, something beyond the control of the ordinary American citizen.

You can conclude those things. Or, you might want to think about the relative availability of handguns in the United States and in Canada.

In the United States, there are approximately 200 million firearms of all kinds owned by citizens-not police officers, not members of the military. Guns are astonishingly easy to obtain-if you want a gun, it will be yours.

In Canada, before a person purchases any firearm, the person must obtain a firearms acquisition certificate-the price for a first-time certificate is $50. To be granted the certificate, a person must provide the name of two references, and provide the government a passport-type photograph. For a new applicant, there is a mandatory delay of 28 days from the time the application is received until the time the permit is issued.

There are strict government rules in Canada about the safe storage of firearms. Approximately 200 types of weapons-mostly assault rifles, pistols with large magazines, and combat shotguns-are either restricted by the government or prohibited outright. Gun laws in Canada have been strengthened in recent years in an effort to prevent the escalation of gun violence.

In the United States, for virtually the first time even staunch members of the National Rifle Association are going public with their belief that the gun craziness in our country has gotten completely out of hand, and that something has to be done. Yet the answers will never be simple-today so many criminals own so many guns that you cannot play down the amount of fear in the minds of people who are considering arming themselves in self-defense. We are on the brink of a Wild West atmosphere where an every-man-for-himself credo seems to be forming, even as the citizenry is sickened by gun deaths.

Some voices-sober and reasoned-are even calling for the repeal of the constitutional right to bear arms, or at least the right to bear handguns. America is armed and dangerous right now, and there is no indication things are on their way to getting any better. 12,090 handgun murders in the United States-136 handgun murders in Canada. Maybe it's the Canadian air on the other side of the invisible line. Maybe it's the Canadian water. Certainly it's something.